Abstract

SENORANS, Dolores. Activism and political aesthetics in the neoliberal city. Etnográfica [online]. 2021, vol.25, n.2, pp.405-427.  Epub Nov 25, 2021. ISSN 0873-6561.  https://doi.org/10.4000/etnografica.10100.

This article analyses the development of forms of activism in articulation with the ways in which urban space is experimented and produced in the neighbourhood of La Boca, Buenos Aires, Argentina. I show that the State and private developers transformed this space based on the aesthetic quality of certain popular practices to make visible some areas and to promote ideas of community oriented to tourism; while other subjects, practices and forms of life were concealed. At the same time, I show how the social and political organisation Los Pibes, together with other neighbourhood based activists and organisations, sought to transform this distribution of the sensible through practices of activism and aesthetic interventions on urban space. I contend that aesthetics was a form of knowledge and also a way of producing political geographies that put into question the spatial configurations of inequality in the neoliberal city.

Keywords : activism; aesthetics; spatial disputes; urban renewal processes.

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